Wisconsin couple
Richard Taylor and Ray Vahey were coming up on
their 50 years together when Taylor died in July. But in
their last year together they not only decided to
finally come out to family and friends but
also joined a very public fight against a
constitutional marriage ban on the November ballot.
My husband,
Richard Taylor, died in July just shy of our 50th
anniversary on September 16. During our last year
together, we finally found the courage and the
strength to tell the world who we really were. And
together we became activists, joining the gay rights group
Fair Wisconsin in publicly opposing a proposed
constitutional ban on same-sex marriage and civil
unions that will appear on the November ballot in Wisconsin.
I met Richard
Taylor (pictured above, right; I am on the left) in
September 1956. We fell in love during my first solo
vacation. Richard was managing a toy warehouse for a
department store in Cleveland, and I had just
graduated from high school in Youngstown, Ohio.
We first passed
each other on Euclid Avenue in Cleveland, and my heart
raced as I saw him in a black leather jacket, Levi's, and
motorcycle boots. A few hours later we saw each other
at the Greyhound Bus Station Post House. Soon we were
on our way to my hotel. When we checked Richard into
my room, the clerk offered to have a cot brought up, but I
assured him we’d make out—and we
certainly did.
It was the height
of his busy season, so we spent our honeymoon in a
100-year-old warehouse. He set out work schedules for the
following days and put me to work shooting price tags
on Madame Alexander dolls. Those hours together were
more romantic than a trip to any destination because
they transported us to a special place of our own creation.
Over the years
Richard always kept his indomitable spirit, his courage,
his gentle and loving ways, and his joy for life—but
ours was a necessarily secret place. We were living in
a deeply homophobic era that in spite of some progress
continues to this day.
Out of
self-preservation we hid our feelings from family, friends,
and above all, from our employers. We drew closer and
closer over the years as we encountered the challenges
and the ups and downs of life together. We saw each
other as the most important person in the world, which made
it easier to make choices and compromises that kept each
other's hopes and well-being primary in our minds.
But living in the
closet built walls of fear and misunderstanding between
us and our families—walls that we only started to
break down last year. Society had not progressed to
the point that our families could understand and be
accepting of us, and for 49 years we could not be
frank—but out of caution and habit we were also tardy
in giving some family and friends the chance to accept
us.
Our parents and
some of our siblings died without having known who were
really were. If we had taken the chance to put our love on
the table, we might have been so much closer to them
over these many years.
Last year we came
to see that no matter how deeply we were in the closet,
the door is transparent, and folks who had their wits about
them and knew us for a while were aware of us anyway.
That lifted a great burden from our shoulders.
In 2005 we came
out publicly and spoke of our love at Milwaukee’s
PrideFest community rally. That was our epiphany. We began
to speak to church groups and various organizations
and testified at the Wisconsin state capitol in
opposition to the proposed amendment that would ban
civil unions and marriage for couples like us.
We knew that we
were part of the Over the Hill Gang, and that more of our
lives were behind us than ahead of us. But we vowed to each
other that we would speak out against injustice for as
long as each of us drew breath. Richard kept his
promise, and I am going to do my best to keep mine. I
would not change one moment of our lives, but this last year
was the most glorious of them all because we were
being open and because of our involvement in this
effort.
Click here to follow The Advocate on Twitter.
Page 1 of 2